Olive grove in Spain: Britons have taken this Mediterranean staple to our (we hope healthier) hearts Photo: Getty Images If the news that the price of olive oil may go up by 40 per cent is slightly alarming, it shows how we have taken this Mediterranean staple to our (we hope healthier) hearts. The stuff might only have been found in chemists when Elizabeth David’s writing caught on, […]
WASHINGTON — The United States, as promised by President Obama, has stepped up its airstrike campaign in Iraq, hitting targets near Baghdad in the effort to help the Iraqi government win back territory seized by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Pentagon officials said Monday. The offensive is the first expansion of the United States’ campaign against the Islamist militant group that Mr. Obama outlined last […]
Unidentified warplanes conducted four airstrikes on Monday near Tripoli, leaving one dead and five wounded, a spokesman for Libya’s Islamist-allied militias and a militia commander said. Mohammed al-Gharyani, a spokesman for the Libya Dawn militia alliance, said the airstrikes hit the town of Gharyan, 50 miles south of Tripoli. A militia commander said the strikes had targeted Libya Dawn ammunition warehouses and weapons depots. This entry passed […]
ISTANBUL — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said on Monday that several exiled leaders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood who fled to Qatar but lately have come under pressure to leave that Persian Gulf monarchy could perhaps find a new refuge in his country. “If they make any request to come to Turkey, such an application would be assessed and examined,” Mr. Erdogan said, according to a […]
The National Security Agency (NSA) is hacking into corporate servers and attacking global ISPs as part of its effort to map off the entire Internet according to a report Sunday in Der Spiegel, a German daily, citing new documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The spy agency is also placing under surveillance the CEOs and other employees at telecom companies it considers vital to the infrastructure […]
As the issue of cell phones and distracted driving grows more divisive in many countries, a city in China has created a tongue-in-cheek way of discouraging distracted walking. The municipality of Chongqing has created a phone-free pedestrian lane on its sidewalks. Chongqing, a municipality of 29 million in southwest China, is trying to figure out how to break pedestrians of the habit of walking while looking down […]
More and more places in Hong Kong now accept Chinese yuan Photo: ALAMY Lord Patten was the last governor of Hong Kong, and still, it seems, has a keen interest in its affairs. He has written a piece for The Financial Times, extolling his views on Britain’s “moral and political obligation” to its former colony. But his words, like his actions as governor, reveal that he never understood […]
Google is bringing its two operating systems — Android and Chrome — closer together with the release of its first four Android apps for Chromebooks. Announced last Thursday, the new Android apps for Chrome OS include the language education app Duolingo; Sight Words, a vocabulary learning app for children; the workplace productivity tool Evernote; and the video creation and sharing app Vine. “These first apps are the […]
[embedded content] ‘The most advanced wireless speaker system ever developed.” The creators of the Core didn’t just say it, they believe it. And since their Indiegogo campaign is 5X overfunded in less than a week, others are convinced, too. The compact speaker achieves life-like, better than stereo sound by “leveraging a combination of wave field synthesis and beam forming, to create an acoustic bubble in the room.” […]
Customers pre-ordered more than four million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets in just the first 24 hours, according to Apple, around double the number the company saw for the iPhone 5s and 5c a year ago. Apple is on track to top 10 million units sold over the entire launch weekend, if the tech giant can keep up with the level of demand. The smartphones first […]
Mojang, the small Swedish firm behind the wildly popular video game Minecraft, is being acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 billion. The sale is set to be closed late this year, with the acquisition expected to be break-even in fiscal year 2015. One of Mojang’s founders, Markus Persson — known as “Notch” — said in a post on his personal blog on Monday that he would be leaving […]
By Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Tommy Wilkes NEW DELHI/MUMBAI Mon Sep 15, 2014 6:12pm IST 1 of 4. Visitors look at Android One Based mobiles after its launch in New Delhi September 15, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Anindito Mukherjee NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) – Google Inc(GOOGL.O) launched in India on Monday a $105 smartphone, the first device from its “Android One” initiative which is aimed at boosting sales in key emerging […]
Boom and bust – two words that are regularly heard when the property market in the United Arab Emirates, especially Dubai, is discussed. But that theme appears to be changing. At least that’s what some industry experts are indicating. The property market, after rebounding sharply since early 2013 from the global financial crisis-induced crash, is now showing signs of stabilising – with the pace of growth in […]
KKR ‘s Samie says the key challenges in the region are valuations, regulations and issues with minority ownership. Nicolas Parasie for The Wall Street Journal KKR & Co. has been in the Middle East and North Africa since 2008. In what could be one of the largest buyout deals ever in the region, the New York-based private equity giant is jointly bidding for Kuwait’s Americana. The Wall […]
By Telegraph View 6:00AM BST 15 Sep 2014 The United Kingdom is teetering on the brink of dissolution; opinion polls show that the Scottish referendum is too close to call with any certainty. Those polls also show that half a million Scots have yet to make up their minds. That is an unnerving statistic: the future of the country rests upon how their indecision crystallises on Thursday, […]
UAE. Two-thirds (66 percent) of millennial high-frequency travellers rate “unique rewards” as an important factor when choosing a hotel loyalty program, compared with just 43 percent of their older counterparts, according to a new Deloitte study, “Winning the Race for Guest Loyalty”. “Our study indicates that customers are waiting to see which program will provide them with the greatest relevant rewards before they commit to a brand, […]
INTERNATIONAL. With momentum building for international military action against Islamist extremists in Syria, the United States reiterated Friday it will not coordinate with strongman Bashar al-Assad in the effort. “The answer to the security challenges is not the Assad regime,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters. “They have created this security vacuum. We are not going to be working with them in this fight,” she […]
SAUDI ARABIA. Banks with experience arranging Islamic bond sales may stand to benefit from the potential opening of Saudi Arabia’s debt market to foreign investors, according to the investment banking unit of Mashreqbank PSC. (MASQ) “There’ll be a lot of potential for non-Saudi banks to get involved on the advising and arranging side,” Abdul Kadir Hussain, who oversees about $700 million as chief executive officer of Mashreq […]
Militants from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) taking aim at captured Iraqi soldiers Photo: AP In the wake of David Haines’ beheading, we have republished this piece explaining why Isil carry out their atrocities As Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria butcher thousands of “infidels” and carry off their women and children into slavery, many in the West are inclined to see […]
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was “extremely encouraged” by pledges of military assistance against Islamic State militants by countries inside and outside the Middle East and that some nations had offered ground troops. Kerry has been touring the Middle East to try to secure backing for U.S. efforts to build a coalition to fight the Islamic State militants who have grabbed territory in Syria […]
On the face of it, Jordan must be a tough sell to international investors: there is the ubiquitous threat of instability and violence lurking from neighboring Syria and Iraq while the kingdom’s small economy, which is reliant on foreign aid, is strained by high unemployment and budget deficits. Nonetheless, some foreign private equity groups are willing to take the risk. Buyout giant Carlyle Group last year bought […]
Jeremy Paxman, who is a quarter Scot, would have like a say in the future of the Union Photo: PA/BBC On Thursday, the English will discover what the Scots really think of them. Like the final row in a troubled marriage, it could be the event that serves to separate those we were once told God had joined together. The decision is not for those of us who […]
Secretary of State John Kerry and Sameh Shoukry, the Egyptian foreign minister, in Cairo. By MICHAEL R. GORDON and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK September 13, 2014 CAIRO — Secretary of State John Kerry received broad assurances but no public commitments from Egypt on Saturday as he continued his tour of the Middle East to try to assemble a coalition behind an American campaign against the extremist group known as the Islamic State in Iraq […]
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI and KIMIKO DE FREYTAS-TAMURA September 13, 2014 The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria released a video Saturday of the third beheading of a foreign hostage, a British aid worker. The execution was a clear message to Britain, a vital ally of the United States as it builds an international coalition to target the militant group, which has made stunning advances across Syria and northern Iraq in recent months. […]
